June
2003
I
had been warned. I had watched the 20/20 episode over and over
again. I had spoken directly to a handful of people who had been
there before. I had read countless blogs and websites. But nothing
prepared me for what I experienced my first day at the children’s
hospital. I left utterly horrified.
As
we walked from the parking lot to the guardhouse located on the
hospital perimeter, I remember being the most worried that we weren’t
going to be granted access into the hospital. The hospital staff
was extremely skeptical about giving outsiders, especially Americans,
an insider look at the goings on behind the closed doors. I’m not
exactly sure what Michelle (the American missionary we were working
with that summer) said to the guard in Romanian, but I can assure you
allowing us access was of no benefit to him since as we did not offer
him any bribes or money to let us through. Finally, after much
hesitation, we were miraculously allowed to enter.
As
I walked through the double set of glass doors, I remember thinking
how eerily quiet it seemed. Where were all the people? And why
were all the lights off? Didn’t they have electricity? And why
was it so hot? I didn’t expect air conditioning but couldn’t we
at least open a window? (I later learned Romanians don’t like to
open windows because they believe the cross-breeze can cause
illness).
As
we made our way up the hospital stairs I couldn’t believe that we
had to step around cigarette butts and broken windowpane glass.
Wasn’t that a hazard to patient safety? That would never fly in
America!
Alas,
we arrived on the 7th
floor – our home away from home for the rest of the summer. The
walls were sea-foam green, the curtains dark brown and heavy, the
rubber tiles on the floor were pealing away, cockroaches were
scurrying around the baseboards, the white paint was chipping off the
metal cribs, the en-suite bathrooms had scant running water, no soap,
and barely usable cabinets.
The
babies…oh, the poor babies were all lying there lifeless. I didn’t
hear any of them cry. It was as if they were far beyond that…they
had already reached a point where they knew their cries would get
them nowhere so they stopped trying. Some of them also shared a tiny
crib with another abandoned baby. They were covered in mosquito
bites and dripping sweat from head to toe. It was SO HOT!!!! They
were literally dressed in rags and wrapped in about 3-4 inch thick
cloth diapers (which forced them to lay 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
with arched backs). It was obvious the purpose of the layers and
layers of cloth was so that the babies could lie there for 12 hours
in soiled diapers but not soak through the bed sheets.
Not
only were the babies not stimulated by sound, touch, sight, or smell,
but when it came time to feeding, they were all fed via glass bottles
propped up by the bed sheets. If the bottle slipped or if the baby
wasn’t able to catch all of the rice cereal/milk that was coming
out of the enormously large nipple, they were simply out of luck.
Feeding time was over and they’d have to wait again until the next
scheduled feeding. I also witnessed toddlers attempting to rock
themselves to sleep since they knew no one else would. And I saw
kids slamming their heads as hard as they could against the metal
cribs over and over again just so that they could get some sort of
stimulation.
The
tears started to well. It was all way too much and way too much to
take in at once. But I KNEW I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t let the
nurses see me upset. If they did, they wouldn’t let me back, and
these abandoned babies needed me and all the loving they could get.
I
left the hospital that day with a very heavy heart but excited at the
same time for how God was going to use me that summer. I knew he had
incredible plans in store…
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